Reframing ObamaCare for Libertarians

We talk a lot about reframing here because she who frames the conversation controls its outcome. And negotiation is simply a conversation that leads to agreement.

Present your own desires as a limited time benefit to your bargaining partner and you don’t even have to mention what you’d like in return for quite some time. The focus is not on your needs, but your purchaser’s, your employer’s or your potential client’s desires.

Framing in the political arena is called “spinning” and most people recognize the ploy. Whether you believe waterboarding is torture or not, the military phrase “enhanced interrogation technique” is a neutral frame or "spin" that permits people to pretty much ignore the issue.

The question raised by legal challenges to ObamaCare is seemingly simple - can the government require us to purchase health insurance as part of a plan that provides it to everyone. Opponents have argued that the government has never before required its citizens to do such a thing. True or not, this argument has persuaded many that ObamaCare drastically increases the federal government's power. The argument is one we lawyers refer to as the "slippery slope" or "camel's nose under the tent."

If you let the feds do this, next thing you know they'll be requiring us to buy vegan at Whole Foods, stop smoking our Marlboros and join a gym.

ObamaCare a Market-Based Approach to Health Care

Kerr contends that his fellow libertarians are missing the point of ObamaCare's structure, which is more market-oriented than any previous "big government" plan to tackle the provision of necessary services to its citizens. It may be unprecedented but it's unprecedented in the right direction.

Kerr explains,

Pretty much everyone agrees that a single-payer government monopoly paid for out of payroll taxes would be constitutional. It’s the old big-government way of doing things, and is certainly not “unprecedented.” It’s old news. So if the Affordable Care Act had been based on that model, there would be no challenge to its constitutionality.

In other words, although libertarians and the GOP loathe a single-payer government health care plan, there's no question that it would be constitutional. So what's politically wrong with ObamaCare? Not much.

Now enter the individual mandate. In the health care debates, an individual mandate was considered a more market-oriented alternative to the single-payer model. As far back as 1992, the idea was pitched by the Heritage Foundation . . . [and] was then enacted in Massachusetts in 2006 under Republican Governor Mitt Romney.

The basic idea is to reject a one-size-fits-all method of government control and to instead continue to allow private companies to offer health care plans, with the catch that everyone who can afford health care must buy it.